Time Together Gorseinon. Rick Wilson 12th February 2010 rick@communitylives.co.uk

Locality Building – one experiment in design One element of Swansea Transformation process. Build social networks to support person centred support planning Time Together – Gorseinon is a collaborative experiment exploring Citizen Directed social care in partnership with the organisations and citizens who live and work in the Gorseinon area.

Time Together Network Member based network of citizens who both need and can offer support to each other in living successful lives in their community. Citizens are invited to join and take part in the network on the basis that everyone has a contribution to make which is valuable to the people around them.

Time Together Network They are supported to map their needs as well as the things that they offer to each other, they are rewarded for their participation with Time Credits which they can use to get access to events and facilities made available by the Time Together Alliance. The first members are citizens who are already actively involved in services, but the intention is to attract wider citizen membership.

Time Together Alliance The Alliance will be a growing group of provider, commissioning and community organisations with an interest in the wellbeing and support of all Citizens of Gorseinon. They are brought together by a common interest to make best collaborative use of their resources in supporting the Citizens that they serve.

Time Together Alliance Exploring and sharing new technology and best practice, mapping their shared assets, and finding more efficient collaborative ways of using them. Promoting network membership with the people that they serve and help these people to consider not only the support that they need but also what they can contribute to others around them. Working together with citizens and members of the Assessment and Support team in creating more joined up, innovative and sustainable approaches to social care and community living in the Gorseinon area.

Assessment and Support Team The Assessment and Support Team is made up of Social Workers and Care Managers with responsibility for citizens of Gorseinon. Within the Adult Services Transformation process there is a process piloting new person centred methods of assessment and support planning, these can be explored alongside Time Together – Gorseinon. The team works with the Alliance and the Network to translate these plans into reality in which they explore how support can be arranged on behalf of individuals through a combination of commissioned support packages arranged through the Alliance, and informal peer to peer support facilitated through the Network. Direct Payments and Individual budgets become more useful and more embedded in networks of relationships, the potential for pooling budgets may become more practical.

Better communication Within the Time Together structure open communication will be very important; we will use Swansea People as part of this experiment. This tool enables citizens and professionals to communicate together as individuals or groups, they can communicate through video, pictures or sound as well as the written word. This tool has mapping, chat, and time-banking functionality being built into to it; it has also been built with the protection of vulnerable adults as a central consideration. Members of the Alliance can make available training and advice to develop skills to support this. Timebanking projects have demonstrated the value of re-conditioned computing equipment as a thank you for citizen participation in community development.

Building a stronger community Time Together – Gorseinon will be squarely embedded in the wider community, although it will be initiated by agencies working within social care arena and by citizens with an interest in social care and support, the intention will be to build wider links will other agencies and individuals who are interested in creating a stronger more mutually supportive and sustainable Gorseinon. This will include making links with formal representative structures in the community. This is important because although focused on social care Time Together will help to build structures that will encourage participative democracy.

Measures of success It will be possible to evaluate the Time Together with a range of measures including: Citizen Approval – as gathered by satisfaction evaluation. Citizen engagement – as recorded through growing levels of citizen time committed and exchanged for time credits. Agency engagement – as recorded in the growing commitment or providers and community groups in the work of the project. Asset survey – this will be recorded through an asset survey of community venues, groups, events, and activities. Shared Resource Spend – this will look at a comparison of overall resource spend through commissioned services over the life of the project.

Measures of success Individual Outcomes – this will review the degree to which the Adult Services Individual Outcomes are met for citizens with social care needs in the Gorseinon area. Model transferability – to what degree is the approach useful in other communities or particular to Gorseinon. One Planet Principles – We are keen to apply some collective commissioning principles to this project, the key ones concern One Planet Living. These will focus on the sustainability of the services and supports created in the community. This is important for the obvious environmental advantages but because this will also encourage collaborative ‘no waste’ thinking.

People and Places Using the web and ICT to create an open structure for planning lives and managing support in the Community. Used by 13 LA’s (6 in Wales). Mostly Learning Disabilities at the moment. Currently under significant re-development to become a community development / communication tool.

Functionality Mail Calendar Chat Diary Friends Dating Groups Makes sharing multi-media easy Personal circles of friends protects vulnerable people Designed to use adaptive technologies.

Community Functionality Community Mapping People can create and share useful assets in their community. Agencies can start to see themselves differently Timebanking What is needed, offered in my community.

Getting Feedback Using Status updates To get aggregated views from large groups This will help the wider group to see what it thinks and help supporting agencies to engage at the most crucial points.

Learning so far Very empowering – people so far really approve. Potential for co-productive models of organisation enormous. What will this do to transaction costs? Training staff with new skills is positively received. Technical obstacles are easy to overcome. The cultural shift is the hard part – fits naturally into the move to outcomes and community development.